The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 by David Masson

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news of the victory reached London, the Parliament, amid their variousrejoicings, and their voting of a day of public thanksgiving to God, ajewel worth 500_l_. to Fairfax, and the like, did not forget onepractical inference from what had happened. That same day (June 16) theCommons signified to the Lords their desire that Cromwell's exceptionalLieutenant-generalship should be prolonged; and, accordingly, on June 18it was agreed by both Houses "That Lieutenant-general Cromwell shallcontinue as Lieutenant-general of the Horse, according the establishedpay of the Army, for three months from the end of the forty days formerlygranted to him." This extended his command under Fairfax only to Sept.22; but, that we may not have to refer to the matter again, we may herestate that, before that date arrived, the term of his service wasstretched for other four months, with an understanding in fact that itwas to be indefinitely elastic. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals ofdays named.]

Naseby proved the beginning of the end. It was the shivering of thecentral mass of Royalism in England, and the subsequent events of the warmay be regarded as only so much provincial addition, and tedious pursuitof the fragments. A sketch of these events will suffice.

The beaten King having fled, with the wrecks of his army, back throughLeicestershire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, into Wales, and theMidlands thus being safe, Fairfax was at liberty to transfer hisvictorious New Model to the part of England where its presence was thenmost sorely needed, i.e. the West and South-West.--The brigade which hehad detached, under Colonel Welden, for the relief of Taunton, whenrecalled himself from his former march westward, had successfullyaccomplished that object (May 12), but only itself to be shut up inTaunton by a second and severer siege by Goring's forces, returned intothose parts. By way of a temporary arrangement for action in the West inthese circumstances, Parliament had by an ordinance, May 24, entrusted aseparate command in chief of whatever forces could be raised for the Westto Major-general Edward Massey, an officer well acquainted with that partof the country, and distinguished by his previous services in itthroughout the war. [Footnote: The Ordinance is in the Lords Journalsunder the date named.] But Massey was to hold the separate command onlytill Fairfax could assume it in person. Accordingly, when Fairfax, afterseeing the King fairly chased away from Naseby, turned once moresouthwards, and, by rapid marches through Warwickshire andGloucestershire, arrived in Wilts (June 27), the conduct of the war inthe South-West became the regular work of the New Model, with Massey asbut an auxiliary. The progress was rapid. July 3, Taunton was relievedthe second time, and Goring's forces obliged to retire: July 10, LamportBattle was fought, in which Goring was defeated with great loss; July 23,Bridgewater was taken by storm; July 30, the city of Bath surrendered.Thus in one month the King's power was broken all through Somersetshire.August sufficed for the same result in Dorsetshire, where SherborneCastle was battered and stormed on the 15th. On the 10th of Septembercame the splendid success of the storming of Bristol. This great city wasdefended by Prince Rupert, who had made his way again into the South-Westfor the purpose, and who had assured the King that he would hold it tothe last. Nevertheless, after a siege of eighteen days, he was glad tosurrender--himself and his men marching out with their personal baggageand the honours of war, but leaving all the ordnance, arms, andammunition in the city as the spoil of the Parliament. [Footnote: YoungMajor Bethell was mortally wounded in the storming of Bristol; and hereis a touching little incident of the same action from Mr. Markham's_Life of Fairfax_. "Among the slain (in one of the attacks) was ayoung officer named Pugsley, who was buried by Fairfax's order, withmilitary honours in a field outside the fort. He was just married, andhis wife survived him for 60 years. On her death, in 1705, she wasburied, according to her expressed wishes, without a coffin, in herwedding dress, and with girls strewing flowers and fiddlers playingbefore her. In this way she was borne to her final resting place by theside of her husband, and the place is still known as Pugsley's Field."]It was the greatest blow the King had received since Naseby; and he wasso enraged with Rupert that he revoked all his commands, and ordered himto leave England. Rupert, however, having gone to the King, areconciliation was brought about; and, though he held no high commandagain during the rest of this war, he remained in the King's service. Thesurrender of Bristol was followed by that of Devizes Castle (Sept. 23)and that of Laycock House (Sept. 24) in Wilts, and by the storming ofBerkeley Castle (Sept. 23) in Gloucestershire. [Footnote: This summary ischiefly from Sprigge; where, in addition to the text there is anexcellent chronological table of actions and sieges: one or two of thefacts are from Clarendon, and Carlyle's _Cromwell_.]

POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY.

Let us leave the West and South-West for a time, and turn to the North.--As late as May and June 1645, Baillie, then back in London and again onduty in the Westminster Assembly, had still been hoping great things fromhis beloved Scottish Army in the North. Since the taking of Newcastle(Oct. 1644), indeed, the services of this army had been mainly dumb-show,so that the English had begun to despise it and to ask whether it wasworth its wages. Baillie's hope, however, was that, somehow or otherafter all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, theinvention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform thefinishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughtswhen the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident," he writes, June 17,1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face ofaffairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party isbroken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lordhas given the victory of that day." The news of the taking of Carlisle atlast by the Scots (June 28) may have helped to revive his spirits; butthat also may have been an indirect consequence of Naseby, and thesubsequent small success of the Scots during those months when Fairfax,Cromwell, and the New Model were succeeding so splendidly in the South-West, again threw Baillie into despondency. The taking of PontefractCastle (July 21) and of Scarborough (July 25) in Yorkshire, and finallythat of Latham House in Lancashire, after its two years' defence by theCountess of Derby (Dec. 4), were the work of the English Parliamentariansof the Northern Counties; and all the Scots did was very disappointing.From Carlisle they did, indeed, march south, to keep a watch on theKing's movements in the Midlands after Naseby, and, after hovering aboutin those parts, they laid siege to the town of Hereford, by the desire ofParliament (July 31). But early in September they raised the siege, Levenpleading that he had not received the promised support and was unable toremain. With such grumblings and complaints of arrears in their pay, theScots returned northwards, through the mid-counties, to Yorkshire, theEnglish Parliament thinking worse and worse of them, but still speakingthem fair, and desiring to retain them for minor service somewhere inEngland while the New Model was doing the real work. [Footnote:Rushworth, VI. 118-127; and Baillie, II. 286-316.]

THE EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND.

It was not only the small performance and continued grumbling of theScottish Auxiliary Army in England that had begun, by September 1645, todisgust the English Parliamentarians with their friends of the Scottishnation. In Scotland itself there had been an extraordinary outbreak ofRoyalism, which had not only perturbed that country throughout, but hadlatterly advanced to the very borders of England, threatening to connectitself with all of English Royalism that was not already beaten, and soundo the hard work and great successes of the New Model. Who that hasread Scott's _Legend of Montrose_ but must be curious as to thefacts of real History on which that romance was founded? They areromantic enough in themselves, and they form a very important episode inthe general history of the Civil War.

Our last sight of the young Earl of Montrose was in November 1641, whenthe King, during his visit to Scotland, procured his release, and that ofhis associates in the Merchiston House Compact, from their imprisonmentin Edinburgh Castle (Vol. II. p. 307). The life of the young Earl hadthen been given back to him, but in what circumstances! Not only had allhis expectations from the Merchiston House Compact been falsified,expectations of the overthrow of the Argyle supremacy in Scotland, and ofthe establishment of a new government for the King on an aristocraticbasis; but, by the King's own acts, Argyle was left doubly confirmed inthe supremacy, with the added honour of the Marquisate, and thePresbyterian clergy dominant around him. Such a Scotland was no countryfor Montrose. Away from Edinburgh, therefore, on one or other of hisestates, in Perthshire, Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, or Dumbartonshire,and only occasionally in the society of his wife and his four littleboys, we see him for some months, thrown back moodily upon himself,hunting now and then, corresponding with his friends Napier and Keir, butfinding his chief relief in bits of Latin reading, dreams of Plutarch'sheroes, and the writing of scraps of verse. Thus:--

"An Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone; My thoughts did evermore disdain A rival on my throne: He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all."

Alas! in a Scotland abject under a squint-eyed Argyle, with Loudoun andWarriston for his lieutenants, and a thousand rigid and suspicious black-coats giving the law singly in their pulpits and parishes, and thunderingit collectively from their Assemblies, what room or opening was there forany such Plutarchian life? It was little better in England, from whichanyhow he was debarred. He would go abroad. Were there not great strifesin Europe, struggles other than Presbyterian, into which a young ScottishEarl might fling himself, to win a glorious name, or die sword in hand?[Footnote: Napier's _Montrose_ (1856), 371-3, and Appendix to Vol.I. p. xxxiv.; Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose (translation of 1819 from theoriginal Latin of 1648), Preface, p. vi.] So till August 1642, when theKing raised his standard for the Civil War in England. Then there wasagain hope. The King remembered the fiery young Scottish Earl, andcommunications had passed between them. Montrose went into England; sawthe Queen immediately after her landing at Burlington Bay (February 1642-3); and pressed upon her his views as to the way in which Scotland mightbe roused in the King's behalf. He seemed to her Majesty but a braveyoung enthusiast; and, the Marquis of Hamilton having hastened fromScotland to counteract him, and to promise that he himself and hisbrother Lanark would keep Scotland firm to the King's interest withoutthat open rising against the Argyle government which Montroserecommended, the cooler counsel had prevailed, Hamilton and Montrose hadthus gone back into Scotland together, Hamilton with the new title ofDuke (April 12, 1643) to encourage him in his difficult labour, andMontrose disappointed, watched, and in fresh danger. Again, however, asmonths had passed on, the chance of some such bold enterprise forMontrose as he himself had projected had become more likely. How illHamilton and Lanark had succeeded in _their_ milder undertaking wealready know. They had not been able to check the tide of sympathy inScotland with the English Parliamentarians; they had not been able toprevent that sudden Convention of the Scottish Estates which Argylethought necessary in the crisis (June 1643); they had not been able toprevent the cordial reception there of the Commissioners from the EnglishParliament, nor the offer of armed aid from Scotland to the cause of theParliament on the terms of Henderson's _Solemn League and Covenant_(August 1643). Montrose, who had foreseen this result, and had beentrying in vain to engage the Marquis of Huntley and other Scottish noblesin an independent coalition for the King, had not gone near theConvention, but, while it was yet deliberating in Edinburgh, had takencare to be again in England, on his way to the King with his budget ofadvices. A Scottish Covenanting army would certainly invade England inthe cause of the Parliament: let their Majesties be in no doubt aboutthat! He had himself the best reason to know the fact; for had not theCovenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and offering toforgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegianceto the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projectedarmy under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with thistemptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposesof the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service,however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of theCovenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contraryenterprise, already explained to the Queen, by which the Argylegovernment should be laid in the dust, Scotland recovered for the King,and all her resources put at his disposal for the recovery of his powerin England also! Hitherto their Majesties had not seen fit to confide inhim, but had trusted rather the Hamiltons, with their middle courses andtheir policy of compromise! Were their Majesties aware what grounds mightbe shown for the belief that these Hamiltons, with all theirplausibilities and fair seeming, were in reality little better thantraitors, who had wilfully mismanaged the King's affairs in Scotland forinterests and designs of their own? So, through the autumn of 1643, hadMontrose been reasoning with the King and Queen, as yet to littlepurpose. But, when the autumn had passed into winter, and there hadgathered round the King, in his head-quarters at Oxford, other refugeeScottish Royalists, driven from their country by the stress of the newLeague and Covenant, and bringing intelligence that Leven's invading armywas actually levied and ready to march, then the tune of the Royal minddid somewhat change. The Duke of Hamilton and his brother Lanark, comingto Oxford, December 16, to clear themselves, were immediately arrested oncharges suggested by Montrose and the other Scots at Court. To wait trialon these charges, the Duke was sent as a prisoner to Pendennis Castle;whence he was removed to St. Michael's Mount in the same county ofCornwall. Lanark, escaping from his arrest at Oxford, took refuge for atime in London, was cordially received there by the ScottishCommissioners and the English Parliamentarians, and returned thence toScotland, converted by the King's treatment of him into an anti-Royalistand Covenanter to all temporary appearance, whatever he might still be atheart. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 73, 74; Wishart, 31-47; Napier, 373-384;Burnet's _Hamiltons_ (edit. 1852), 280-349. Burnet gives the chargesagainst the Hamiltons, with their answers, at length, and narrates eventsanxiously in their behalf.]

The Hamiltons being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearingfor his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commissionhim as his Majesty's Lieutenant in Scotland, and furnish him with somesmall force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country,and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that wereready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this,however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl ofAntrim then with his Majesty at Oxford--that very Randal Macdonnell, Earlof Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far back as 1638, to sendsecretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in hisfirst strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. p. 23)? Six years had elapsedsince then; but there was still extant in Antrim, as the head of thegreat Scoto-Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power formischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between thisclan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland,raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, andmake a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if thetime could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as hisMajesty's commissioned Lieutenant, might there not be such a junction ofthe two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into theagonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from Englandwould be a matter of immediate necessity? So much at least might besurely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listeningto his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643-4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's owncountrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair,Carnwath, Annandale, and Roxburgh? They would have nothing to do withMontrose's plan, and talked of him as a would-be Hotspur. Only a few ofthe younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (theMarquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie'sson and heir), adhered to him. Among the King's English counsellors, ofcourse, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these,however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him allhe could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King'shesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created aMarquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1stof April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland withhimself at their head; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven'sScottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made outappointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces inScotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in-chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should beconferred rather on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice. For his own workin Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force ofvolunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it,would in the meantime be quite enough. [Footnote: Wishart, 47-52;Baillie, II.73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533-537; Rushworth, V. 927; andNapier, 385-388.]

Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyneand Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where heattached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resistingthe advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in theKing's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himselfill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces.There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, sothat the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) wasabout 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most ofthe English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushedon to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed hisstandard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could bedone. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the WestHighlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all tothe north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. Totry to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in theHighlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up theattempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, mostreluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of allPresbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronouncedagainst him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55,Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9.]

"Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," Baillie was able towrite early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, inrecognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisatehad been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come torepresent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose thatshould contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such acontest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself.For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as minglingactively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillagingMorpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to joinPrince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meetthe Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2)."Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horsefor another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Rupert.The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man thanMontrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousandhorse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland.And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spokemanfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, latein July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued thestrangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctlysouthwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothingremained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had beenbut two days on their march when they found that their leader had giventhem the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second,Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely knownthat he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one,except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secretinstructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwardsremembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn daythree persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottishborder, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and thethird behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a sparehorse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo,intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrosehimself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928]

There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in thisfurtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not aninformal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met onthe 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more thanforty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners fromBurghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they wereapproaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence:"Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit,showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in them, fromIreland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and thesons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to sendthe Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, andpowder and ammunition." On subsequent days there were corrections of thisintelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was thatAntrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montroseat Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in theshape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which hadbeen promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish andScoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshireunder the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here,for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair MacCholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich,_i.e._ Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, sonof Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was alreadypretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of hisname, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, orAlexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, AlexanderMacdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, offthe Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim,professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as theIrish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the wholerace of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of beingambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well aswith his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll theLeft-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster,it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and youngColkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance inEdinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had beenrecently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrimamong the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his hugestature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command ofthe Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending thisgigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force,and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into theterritories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glensbefore it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, itmight work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, theMarquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command againstthe invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote:Balfour's Annals, III. 215 _et seq._; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67;Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused,story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received atthe hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. of Independency (1660), Appendix toPart I. pp. 3-6.]

This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness aboutCarlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th ofAugust, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only twocompanions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know;but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton inPerthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham ofInchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself,and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as"Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collectingnews. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argylepower everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland orHighland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouringHighlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from hischildhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of aforce. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager forintelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He hadnot long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they hadbeen making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither andthither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sendingout the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees.They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part ofInverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and therewere reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montroseas he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becomingdesperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north ofArgyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to giveany; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; thefleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt byArgyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for ageneral arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly,Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written tohim there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that theletters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them soonerthan the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by wayof precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Atholeand make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier,413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfactionof rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure intoScotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes himfirst hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish _after_ he hadcome into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier'snarrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As thelanding of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of Julywas known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton atthat time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the newsmust have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in theNorth of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of hisresolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course,that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain fora time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seeminglyauthentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that hefirst learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in thewood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadfulnews to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention todates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis.]

A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate tothe rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the onehand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch hadbrought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders,looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise forKing Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald fromColonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He hadput on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man," fair-haired,with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, andan air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather smallstature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joyof the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed theirdoubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place asLieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as hisMajor-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot nearCastle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troopswere reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following ofwomen and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons,Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them forthe lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms andammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserablydeficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty-two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422.]

It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles,battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash thephrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a wholeyear, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph.Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible.

Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from thewest, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined byhis kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir JohnDrummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, hegave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to aCovenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perthand Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine,Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse andfoot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose enteredthat town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations,exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder ofwhom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. Butmovement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north-eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too welldefended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earlof Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, andcame down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days ofhis Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of hisRoyalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers,and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh andLord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the timeon this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days onthe doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with aconsiderable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming fromAberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of theupper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by amuster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross,Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilderHighlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, toremain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argylehad meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week ortwo, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into theWest Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, hemade it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry andfatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoidingclose quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Onceat Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him;but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so thatthey, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much ofthis time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley'sown domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. Atlength, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to beroused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose'ssupporters individually having begun to tell, so that even ColonelSibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to facethe winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after acouncil of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6),again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take anyrest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horseinto winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld,whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose'strustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard thisthan, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, hebrought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-fourmiles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yetsixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves,fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison ofPerth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426-469; Rushworth, V. 929-931.]

Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part ofhim. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end ofNovember, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficultto find another commander-in-chief; but at length it was agreed that thefit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of theauxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh onprivate business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalledby express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear thatArgyle would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted thecommission. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 262: also at 416 _et seq._,where there is an interesting letter of General Baillie to his namesakeand kinsman.] Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, thereto spend the rest of the winter.

It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assuredpossession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major-general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing reinforcements from the Highland clans.There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there wereMacdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts ofAppin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans,Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon themountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders?Winter was their idlest time; they were ready for any enterprise: onlywhat was it to be? On this point Montrose held a council of war. "Let uswinter in the country of King Campbell," was what the Macdonalds andother clans muttered among themselves; and Montrose, who would havepreferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered. "But howshall we get there, gentlemen? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know;how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go?"Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. "Iknow," he said, "every farm in the land of MacCallummore; and, if tighthouses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want."And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hills andthrough glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow--firstthrough the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging; then toLoch Tay (Dec. 11); and so through the lands of the BreadalbaneCampbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, tillthey break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range overLorne, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of theircoming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seatof Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it layat Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host rangedthrough the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels intheir glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows whatthey did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts andvillages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever theyare found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailingwomen and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive andstarving in side glens and corries, where even now the tourist shuddersat the wildness. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 930, 931; Baillie, II. 262;Wishart, 106-108; Napier, 470-473.]

The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th ofJanuary, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him;and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estateshad gone to consult with Argyle at Roseneath. About the middle of themonth they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out ofArglyeshire by Lorne and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albynchain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew,moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strongCovenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of thegarrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Ross, Sutherland andCaithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power anddispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians whollyhis own. In these circumstances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyleseemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on toArgyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central partof Scotland with a sufficient force; and Argyle, with 1,100 seasonedinfantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own brokenmen he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him alongthe chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander;but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir DuncanCampbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to commandunder him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strengthfrom the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancingcautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, orthat, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he wouldfall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth. [Footnote:Balfour's Annals, III. 246 _et seq._; Wishart, 109, 110; Napier,475-477; and General Baillie's letter to his cousin Robert Baillie, inBaillie's Letters, II. 417t.]

Then it was that Montrose showed the world what is believed to have beenhis most daring feat of generalship. On the 29th and 30th of January hewas at Kilchuilem on Loch Ness near what is now Fort Augustus. Thence itwas his purpose to advance north to meet Seaforth, when he received newsthat Argyle was thirty miles behind him in Lochaber, at the old cattle ofInverlochy, at the foot of Ben Nevis, near what is now Fort William. Hesaw at once the device. Argyle did not mean to fight him directly, but tokeep dogging him at a distance and then to come up when he should beengaged with Seaforth! Instantly, therefore, he resolved not to go onagainst Seaforth, but to turn back, and fall upon Argyle first byhimself. Setting a guard on the beaten road along the lakes, to preventcommunication with Argyle, he ventured a march, where no march had everbeen before, or could have been supposed possible, up the rugged bed ofthe Tarf, and so, by the spurs of big Carryarick and the secrets of theinfant Spey, now in bog and wet, now knee-deep in snow, over themountains of Lochaber. It was on Friday the 31st of January that he beganthe march, and early in the evening of Saturday the 1st of February theywere down at the foot of Ben Nevis and close on Inverlochy. It was afrosty moonlight night; skirmishing went on all through the night; andArgyle, with the gentlemen of the Committee of Estates who were with him,went on board his barge on Loch Eil. Thence, at a little distance fromthe shore, he beheld the battle of the next day, Sunday, Feb. 2. It wasthe greatest disaster that had ever befallen the House of Argyle. Therewere slain in all about 1,500 of Argyle's men, including braveAuchinbreck and many other important Campbells, while on Montrose's sidethe loss was but of a few killed, and only Sir Thomas Ogilvy, among hisimportant followers, wounded mortally. And so, with a heavy heart, Argylesailed away in his barge, wondering why God had not made him a warrior aswell as a statesman; and Montrose sat down to write a letter to the King."Give me leave," he said, "after I have reduced this country to yourMajesty's obedience and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to yourMajesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself,lest this country be called by _my_ name.'" [Footnote: Rushworth, V.931-2; Wishart, 110-114; Napier, 477-484. Mr. Napier winds up his accountof the Battle of Inverlochy by quoting entire (484-488) Montrose'ssupposed letter to the King on the occasion. The letter, he says, wasfirst "obscurely printed by Dr. Welwood in the Appendix to his Memoirs,1699;" but he adds an extract from the _Analecta_ of the Scottishantiquary Wodrow, to the effect that Wodrow had been told, by a personwho had seen the original letter, that Welwood's copy was a "vitiated"one. No other copy having been found among the Montrose Papers, Mr.Napier has had to reprint Welwood's; which he does with great ceremony,thinking it a splendid Montrose document. It certainly is a strikingdocument; but I cannot help suspecting the genuineness of it as it nowstands. There are anachronisms and other slips in it, suggestingposthumous alteration and concoction.]----The Battle of Inverlochy wasmuch heard of throughout England, where Montrose and his exploits hadbeen for some time the theme of public talk. The King was greatly elated;and it was supposed that the new hopes from Scotland excited in his mindby the success of Montrose had some effect in inducing him to break offthe Treaty of Uxbridge then in progress. The Treaty was certainly brokenoff just at this time (Feb. 24, 1644-5).

On Wednesday the 12th of February, ten days after Inverlochy, the Marquisof Argyle was in Edinburgh, and presented himself in the Parliament,"having his left arm tied up in a scarf." The day before, the Parliamenthad unanimously found "James, Earl of Montrose" (his title of Marquis notrecognised) and nineteen of his chief adherents, including the Earl ofAirlie, Viscount Aboyne, Alexander Macdonald MacColkittoch, and PatrickGraham younger of Inchbrakie, "guilty of high treason," and hadforfaulted "their lives, honours, titles, lands and goods;" also orderingthe Lyon King of Arms, Sir James Balfour, to "delete the arms of thetraitors out of his registers and books of honour." The General Assemblyof the Kirk was then also in session, rather out of its usual season(Jan. 22-Feb. 13), on account of important ecclesiastical businessarising out of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly; and Baillieand Gillespie had come from London to be present. Of course, therebellion of Montrose was much discussed by that reverend body; and, in adocument penned by Mr. Gillespie, and put forth by the Assembly (Feb.12), there was this passage:--"In the meantime, the hellish crew, underthe conduct of the excommunicate and forfaulted Earl of Montrose, and ofAlaster Macdonald, a Papist and an outlaw, doth exercise such barbarous,unnatural, horrid, and unheard-of cruelty as is beyond expression." But,though Parliament might condemn and proscribe Montrose, and the GeneralAssembly might denounce him, the real business of bringing him to accountrested now with General Baillie. To assist Baillie, however, there wascoming from England another military Scot, to act as Major-general ofhorse. He was no other than the renegade Urry, or Hurry, who had desertedfrom the English Parliament to the King, and been the occasion ofHampden's death in June 1643 (Vol. II. 470-1). Though the King had madehim a knight, he had again changed sides. [Footnote: Sir James Balfour'sAnnals, III. 270-273; Baillie's Letters II. 258-263; Acts of GeneralAssembly of the Church of Scotland (edition of 1843), p. 126.]

After Inverlochy, Montrose had resumed his northward march along thechain of lakes to meet Seaforth. That nobleman, however, had been curedof any desire to encounter him. Feb. 19, Elgin surrendered to Montrose;and here, or at Gordon Castle, not far off, he remained some little time,issuing Royalist proclamations, and receiving new adherents, among whomwere Lord Gordon and his younger brother Lord Lewis Gordon, nay Seaforthhimself! Lord Gordon remained faithful; Lord Lewis Gordon was moreslippery; Seaforth had yielded on compulsion, and was to break away assoon as he could. At Gordon Castle Montrose's eldest son and heir, whohad been with him through so many hardships, died after a short illness.Hardly had the poor boy been buried in Bellie church near, when hisfather, now reinforced by the Gordons, so that he could count 2,000 footand 200 horse, was on his "fiery progress" south through Aberdeenshire,"as if to challenge Generals Baillie and Urry." March 9, he was atAberdeen; March 21, he was at Stonehaven and Dunnottar inKincardineshire, burning the burgh and its shipping, and the barns ofEarl Marischal's tenants under the Earl's own eyes. Baillie and Urry keptzig-zagging in watch of him; but, though he skirmished with Urry's horseand tried again and again to tempt on battle, they waited their own time.Once they nearly had him. He had pushed on farther south throughForfarshire, and then west into Perthshire, meaning to cross the Tay atDunkeld on his way to the Forth and the Lowlands. The desertion of LordLewis Gordon at this point with most of the Gordon horse obliged him todesist from this southward march; but, having been informed that Baillieand Urry had crossed the Tay in advance of him to guard the Forthcountry, he conceived that he would have time for the capture of Dundee,and that the sack of so Covenanting a town would be a consolation to himfor his forced return northwards. Starting from Dunkeld at midnight,April 3, he was at Dundee next morning, took the town by storm, and setfire to it in several places. But lo! while his Highlanders and Irishwere ranging through the town, still burning and plundering, and most ofthem madly drunk with the liquors they had found, Baillie and Urry, whohad not crossed the Tay after all, were not a mile off. How Montrose gothis drunken Highlanders and Irish together out of the burning town is aninexplicable mystery; but he did accomplish it somehow, and whirled them,by one of his tremendous marches, of three days and two nights, himselfin the rear and the enemy's horse close in pursuit all the while, pastArbroath, and so, by dexterous choice of roads and passes, in among theprotecting Grampians. "Truly," says his biographer Wishart, "I have oftenheard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not inBritain only, but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose tohis most celebrated victories." [Footnote: Wishart, 115-127; Rushworth,VI. 2.8; Napier, 490-497.]

Except Inverlochy, his most celebrated victories were yet to come. Therewere to be three of them. The first was the Battle of Auldearn inNairnshire (May 9, 1645), in which Montrose's tactics and MacColl's madbravery beat to pieces the regular soldier-craft of Urry, assisted by theEarls of Seaforth, Sutherland, and Findlater. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI.229; Wishart, 128-138; Napier, 500-506.] The second was the Battle ofAlford in Aberdeenshire (July 2, 1645), where Montrose defeated Bailliehimself. MacColkittoch was not present in this battle, the commanders inwhich, under Montrose, were Lord Gordon, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Aboyne,Sir William Rollo, Glengarry, and Drummond of Balloch, while Baillie wasassisted in chief by the Earl of Balcarres. Montrose's loss was triflingin comparison with Baillie's, but it included the death of Lord Gordon[Footnote: Wishart, 133-152; Napier, 526-536]. To the CovenantingGovernment the defeat of Alford was most serious. The Parliament, whichhad adjourned at Edinburgh on the 8th of March, was convoked afresh fortwo short sessions, at Stirling (July 8-July 11), and at Perth (July 24-Aug. 5); and the chief business of these sessions was the considerationof ways for retrieving Baillie's defeat and prosecuting the war[Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 292 307.]. Baillie, chagrined at theloss of his military reputation, wanted to resign, throwing the blame ofhis disaster partly on Urry for his selfish carelessness, and partly onthe great Covenanting noblemen, who had disposed of troops hither andthither, exchanged prisoners, and granted passes, without regard to hisinterests or orders. The Parliament, having exonerated and thanked him,persuaded him at first to retain his commission, appointing a newCommittee of Estates, with Argyle at their head, to accompany and advisehim (July 10). Not even so was Baillie comfortable; and on the 4th ofAugust he definitively gave in his resignation. It was then accepted,with new exoneration and thanks, but with a request that, to allow timefor the arrival of his intended successor (Major-general Monro) fromIreland, he would continue in the command a little longer. Goodnaturedlyhe did so, but unfortunately for himself. He was in the eleventh day ofhis anomalous position of command and no-command, when he received fromMontrose another thrashing, more fatal than the last, in the Battle ofKilsyth in Stirlingshire (Aug. 15, 1645). On both sides there had beengreat exertion in recruiting, so that the numbers in this battle were,according to the estimate of Montrose's biographers, 6,000 foot and 1,000horse under Baillie against 4,400 foot and 500 horse under Montrose.Baillie would not have allowed this estimate, for he complains that therecruiting for him had been bad. Anyhow, his defeat was crushing. Invarious posts of command under Montrose were the aged Earl of Airlie,Viscount Aboyne, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Maclean of Duart, the chief ofClanranald, and MacColkittoch with his Irish. Acting under Baillie, or,as he would have us infer, above him and in spite of him, were Argyle,the Earls of Crawfurd and Tullibardine, Lords Elcho, Burleigh, andBalcarres, Major-general Holborn, and others. Before the battle,Montrose, in freak or for some deeper reason, made all his army, bothfoot and horse, strip themselves, above the waist, to their shirts(which, with the majority, may have implied something ghastlier); and inthis style they fought. The battle was not long, the Macleans andClanranald Highlanders being conspicuous in beginning it, and the oldEarl of Airlie and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle,there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter wassuch as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie'sside against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but thechief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one ofthese. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship inthe Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himselfin this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did notcome ashore till he was at Newcastle. [Footnote: Wishart, 162-171;Napier, 542-541. But see General Baillie's touching and instructivevindication of himself in three documents, printed in his cousinBaillie's Letters and Correspondence (II. 4l7-424). Baillie goes over thewhole of his unfortunate commandership against Montrose, from his meetingwith Argyle at Roseneath after Inverlochy (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle ofKilsyth (Aug. 15. 1645); and the pervading complaint is that he had neverbeen allowed to be real commander-in-chief, but had been thwarted andoverridden by Argyle, Committees of Estates, and conceited individualnobles.]

The Battle of Kilsyth placed all Scotland at Montrose's feet. He enteredClydesdale, took the city of Glasgow under his protection, set up hishead-quarters at Bothwell, and thence issued his commands far and wide.Edinburgh sent in its submission on summons; other towns sent in theirsubmissions; nobles and lairds that had hitherto stood aloof gatheredobsequiously round the victor; and friends and supporters, who had beenarrested and imprisoned on charges of complicity with him during hisenterprise, found themselves released. Dearest among these to Montrosewere his relatives of the Merchiston and Keir connexion--the veteran LordNapier, Montrose's brother-in-law and his Mentor from his youth; SirGeorge Stirling of Keir, and his wife, Lord Napier's daughter; andseveral other nieces of Montrose, young ladies of the Napier house. Infact, so many persons of note from all quarters gathered round Montroseat Bothwell that his Leaguer there became a kind of Court. The great dayat this Court was the 3rd of September, eighteen days after the victoryof Kilsyth. On that day there was a grand review of the victorious army;a new commission from the King, brought from Hereford by Sir RobertSpotswood, was produced and read, appointing Montrose Lord Lieutenant andCaptain-general of Scotland with those Viceregal powers which had tillthen been nominally reserved for Prince Maurice; and, after a glowingspeech, in which Montrose praised his whole army, but especially hisMajor-general, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch, he made it his first actof Viceroyalty to confer on that warrior the honour of knighthood. On thefollowing day proclamations were issued for the meeting of a Parliamentat Glasgow on the 20th of October. Montrose then broke up his Leaguer, toobey certain instructions which had come from the King. These were thathe should plant himself in the Border shires, co-operating there with theEarls of Traquair, Hume, and Roxburgh, and other Royalists of thoseparts, so as to be ready to receive his Majesty himself emerging fromEngland, or at least such an auxiliary force of English as Lord Digbyshould be able to despatch. For Montrose's triumph in Scotland had beenreported all through England and had altered the state and prospects ofthe war there. Kilsyth (Aug. 15) had come as a considerable compensationeven for Naseby (June 14) and the subsequent successes of the New Model.The King's thoughts had turned to the North, and it had become his idea,and Digby's, that, if the successes of the New Model still continued, itwould be best for his Majesty to transfer his own presence out of Englandfor the time, joining himself to Montrose in Scotland. [Footnote:Baillie, II. 313-314; Rushworth, VI. 231; Wishart, 190; Napier, 552-569.]

In obedience to his Majesty's instructions Montrose did advance to theBorder. For about a week he prowled about, on the outlook for theexpected aid from England, negotiating at the same time with some of theBorder lords, and in quest of others with whom to negotiate. On the 10thof September he was encamped at Kelso; thence he went to Jedburgh; andthence to Selkirk. [Footnote: Napier, 570-575.] While he is at this lastplace, let us pause a little to ask an important question.

What was Montrose's meaning? What real political intention lay under themeteor-like track of his marches and battles? What did he want to make ofScotland? This is not a needless question. For, as we know, Montrose wasnot, after all, a mere military madman. He was an idealist in his way, apolitical theorist (Vol. II. 296-298). Fortunately, to assist ourguesses, there is extant a manifesto drawn up under Montrose's dictationat that very moment of his triumph at which we have now arrived. Thedocument is in the handwriting of Lord Napier, his brother-in-law andclosest adviser, and consists of some very small sheets of paper, inNapier's minutest autograph, as if it had been drawn up where writingmaterials were scarce. It was certainly written after Kilsyth, and in allprobability at one of Montrose's halts on the Border. In short, it wasthat vindication of himself and declaration of his policy which Montrosemeant to publish in anticipation of the meeting of a Scottish Parliamentat Glasgow which he had summoned for the 20th of October.

The document is vague, and much of it is evidently a special pleadingaddressed to those who remembered that Montrose had formerly been anenthusiastic Covenanter Still there are interesting points in it. Hisdefence is that it was not _he_ that had swerved from the originalScottish Covenant of 1638. He had thoroughly approved of that Covenant,and had gone on with Argyle and the rest of the Covenanters, perhaps"giving way to more than was warrantable," till their deviation from thetrue purposes of the Covenant had passed all legal hounds. He had seenthis to be the ease at the time of the Treaty of Ripon at the conclusionof the Second Bishops' War; and at that point he had left them, or ratherthey had finally parted from him (Oct. 1640). He had since then gone onin perfect consistency with his former self; and they had gone on, intheir pretended Parliaments and pretended General Assemblies, from bad toworse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre andtheir committees through the shires; finings and imprisonings of theloyal were universal; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. TheChurch too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction"overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents inEngland, to the prejudice of Religion." [Footnote: Several times in thecourse of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comesin--an absurdly selected accusation at the very time when the most patentfact about the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its deadly antagonism toIndependency and all forms of Brownism. Montrose and Napier were probablya little behind-hand in their knowledge of English EcclesiasticalHistory, and merely clutched "Brownism" as a convenient phrase ofreproach, much sanctioned by the King in his English proclamationsagainst Parliament.] So much for a review of his past acts; but what werehis _present_ grounds? Here one listens with curiosity. One of his"grounds" he lays down definitely enough, and indeed with extraordinaryand repeated emphasis. Let his countrymen be assured that he retained hishatred of Episcopacy and would never sanction its restoration inScotland! He would not, indeed, be for uprooting Episcopacy in England,inasmuch as the King and his loyal subjects of that country did notdesire it; nor was he pledged to that by any right construction of theScottish Covenant of 1638. That Covenant referred to Scotland only, andit was that Covenant, and not the later League and Covenant of 1643, thathe had signed. But he had not forgotten that the very cause of thatoriginal Scottish Covenant was the woe wrought by Prelacy in Scotland."It cannot be denied," says the document, "neither ever shall be by us,that this our nation was reduced to almost irreparable evil by theperverse practices of the sometime pretended Prelates; who, having abusedlawful authority, did not only usurp to be lords over God's inheritance,but also intruded themselves in the prime places of civil government,and, by their Court of High Commission, did so abandon themselves, to theprejudice of the Gospel, that the very quintessence of Popery waspublicly preached by Arminians, and the life of the Gospel stolen away byenforcing on the Kirk a dead Service-book, the brood of the bowels of theWhore of Babel." For the defence, therefore, of genuine old ScottishPresbyterianism, he protests "in God's sight" he would be "the firstshould draw a sword." But a spurious Presbyterianism had been invented,and "the outcasting of the locust" had been the "inbringing of thecaterpillar." As he abjured Episcopacy, so he thought the system that hadbeen set up instead "no less hurtful;" wherefore, he concludes,"resolving to eschew the extremities, and keep the middle way of ourReformed Religion, we, by God's grace and assistance, shall endeavour tomaintain it with the hazard of our lives and fortunes, and it shall be noless dear to us than our own souls."--Allowing for the fact thatMontrose, or Napier for him, must have considered it politic toconciliate the anti-Prelatic sentiment, we cannot but construe thesepassages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believedhimself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His programme for Scotland, infact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of theKing's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation ofevery relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and thesubstitution of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of theMarquis of Montrose. [Footnote: The document described and extracted fromin the text is printed entire by Mr. Napier, who seems first to havedeciphered it (Appendix to Vol. I. of his Life of Montrose, pp. xliv.-liii.), and whose historical honesty in publishing it is the more to becommended because it must have jarred on his own predilections about hishero. Many of Montrose's admirers still accept him in ignorance as achampion and hero of high Episcopacy; and for these Mr. Napier's documentmust be unwelcome news.]

Ah! how Fortune turns her wheel! This manifesto of Montrose was to remainin Lord Napier's pocket, not to be deciphered till our own time, and theParliament for which it was a preparation was never actually to meet.

In England there had been amazement and grief over the news of Montrose'striumph. The Parliament had appointed Sept. 5 to be a day of public fastand prayer in all the churches on account of the calamity that hadbefallen Scotland; and on that day the good Baillie, walking in London toand from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since WilliamWallace's days," he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight; and "Whatmeans the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted,to humble us so low?" But he adds a piece of news, "On Tuesday was eightdays" (_i.e._ Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland,David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, hadgone in haste from Nottingham towards Carlisle and Scotland, taking withhim 4,000 horse. This was the wisest thing that could have been done.David Leslie was the very best soldier the Scots had, better by far thanLieutenant-general Baillie, whom Montrose had just extinguished, andbetter even than Monro, whom the Scottish Estates had resolved to bringfrom Ireland as Baillie's successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-315.]

Actually, on the 6th of September, Leslie passed the Tweed, with his4,000 Scottish horse from Leven's army, and some 600 foot he had addedfrom the Scottish garrison of Newcastle. He and Montrose were, therefore,in the Border counties together, watching each other's movements, butLeslie watching Montrose's movements more keenly than Montrose watchedLeslie's. Montrose does not seem to have known Leslie's full strength,and he was himself in the worst possible condition for an immediateencounter with it. It was the custom of the Highlanders in those days,when they had served for a certain time in war, to flock back to theirhills for a fresh taste of home-life; and, unfortunately for Montrose,his Highlanders had chosen to think the review at Bothwell a properperiod at which to take leave. They had been encouraged in this, it isbelieved, by Colkittoch, who, having had the honorary captaincy-generalof the clans bestowed upon him by Montrose in addition to knighthood, hadprojected for himself, and for his old father and brothers, the privatesatisfaction of a war all to themselves in the country of the Campbells.Montrose had submitted with what grace he could; and the Highlanders,with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises ofspeedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne,hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," andgone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by hisuncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and wasbusy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lordshad come to nearly nothing, David Leslie's presence and Argyle's counter-negotiations having had considerable influence. Finally, of the Kinghimself or the expected forces from England there was no appearance. Itwas, therefore, but with a shabby little army of Irish and Lowland footand a few horse that Montrose, with his group of most resolute friends--Lord Napier, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie, Crawfurd, andHartfell, Lords Ogilvy, Erskine, and Fleming, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon,Sir John Dalziel, Drummond of Balloch, Sir Robert Spotswood, Sir WilliamRollo, Sir Philip Nisbet, the young master of Napier, and others--foundhimself encamped, on the 12th of September, at Philiphaugh near Selkirk.His intention was not to remain in the Border country any longer, but toreturn north and get back among his Grampian strongholds. But somehow hisvigilance, when it was most needed, had deserted him. The morning ofSaturday, Sept. 13, had risen dull, raw, and dark, with a thick grey fogcovering the ground; and Montrose, ill-served by his scouts, was at earlybreakfast, when Leslie sprang upon him out of the fog, and in one briefhour finished his year of splendour. Montrose himself, the two Napiers,the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie and Crawfurd, with others,cut their way out and escaped; but many were made prisoners, and theplaces where the wretched Irish were shot down and buried in heaps, andthe tracks of the luckier fugitives for miles from Philiphaugh, are nowamong the doleful memories of the Braes of Yarrow. [Footnote: Rushworth,VI. 231-2; Wishart, 189-207; Napier, 557-580. I have seen, in thepossession of the Rev. Dr. David Aitken, Edinburgh, a square-shapedbottle of thick and pretty clear glass, which was one of several of thesame sort accidentally dug up some few years ago at Philiphaugh, in aplace where there were also many buried gunflints. There were traces, Iam told, from which it could be distinctly inferred that the bottles hadcontained some kind of Hock or Rhenish wine; and the belief of theneighbourhood was that they had been part of Montrose's tent-stock, onthe morning when he was surprised by Leslie.]

Montrose and his fellow-fugitives found their way back to their favouriteAthole, and were not even yet absolutely in despair. The venerableNapier, indeed, had come to his journey's end. Worn out by fatigue, hedied in Athole, and was buried there. Montrose's wife died about the sametime in the eastern Lowlands, and Montrose, at some risk, was present ather funeral. To these bereavements there was added the indignant griefcaused by the vengeances taken by the restored Argyle Government uponthose of his chief adherents who had fallen into their hands. Sir WilliamRollo (the same Major Rollo who had crossed the Border with Montrose inhis disguise), Sir Philip Nisbet, young Ogilvy of Innerquharity, andothers, were beheaded at Glasgow; and Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, CaptainAndrew Guthrie, President Sir Robert Spotswood, and William Murray, theyoung brother of the Earl of Tullibardine, were afterwards executed atSt. Andrews--Lord Ogilvy, who had been condemned with these last, havingcontrived to escape. The desire of retaliation for these deaths co-operating with his determination to make his Captaincy-general inScotland of some avail still for the King's cause, Montrose lurked onperseveringly in his Highland retirement, trying to organize anotherrising, and for this purpose appealing to MacColkittoch and every otherlikely Highland chief, but above all to the Marquis of Huntley and hisfickle Gordons. In vain! To all intents and purposes Montrose'sCaptaincy-general in Scotland was over, and the Argyle supremacy wasreestablished. All that could be said was that he was still at large inthe Highlands, and that, while he was thus at large, the ArgyleGovernment could not reckon itself safe. And so for the present we leavehim, humming to himself, as one may fancy, a stanza of one of his ownlyrics:--

Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh (Sept. 13, 1645) having relieved theEnglish Parliament from the awkwardness of the Royalist uprising inScotland while the New Model was crushing Royalism in England, and thestorming of Bristol by the New Model (Sept. 10) having just been added asa most important incident in the process of the crushing, the war inEngland had reached its fag-end.

The West and the Southern Counties were still the immediate theatre ofaction for the New Model. Cromwell, fresh from his share with Fairfax inthe recent successes in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, wasdetached into Hants; and here, by his valour and skill, were accomplishedthe surrender of Winchester (Oct. 8), and the storming of Basing House,the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Winchester, widower of thatMarchioness on whom Milton had written his epitaph in 1631, but now againmarried (Oct. 14). Thus, by the middle of October, Royalism had beencompletely destroyed in Hants, as well as in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset,and what relics of it remained in the south-west were cooped up in theextreme shires of Devon and Cornwall, whither the Prince of Wales hadretired with Lord Hopton. Here they lingered through the winter.[Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge.]

Meanwhile the King had been steadily losing ground in the Midlands andthroughout the rest of England. Not even after Philiphaugh had he givenup all hopes of a junction with Montrose in Scotland; and a northwardmovement, from Hereford through Wales, which he had begun before the newsof that battle reached him, was still continued. He had got as far asWelbeck in Nottinghamshire (Oct. 13) when he was induced to turn back,only sending 1,500 horse under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale tomake their way into Scotland if possible. Though defeated by theParliamentarians in Yorkshire, Digby and Langdale did get as far as theScottish border; but, finding farther progress hopeless, they left theirmen to shift for themselves, and escaped to the Isle of Man, whence Digbywent to Dublin. The King himself had gone first to Newark, on the easternborder of Nottinghamshire, which was one of the places yet garrisoned forhim; but, after a fortnight's stay there, he returned once more to hishead-quarters at Oxford (Nov. 5). Here he remained through the winter,holding his court as well as he could, issuing proclamations, andobserving the gradual closing in upon him of the Parliamentarian forces.The position of the Scottish auxiliary army in particular had then becomeof considerable importance to him.--We have seen (_antè_, p. 339)how, in September, that army had raised the siege of Hereford, and hadsulkily gone northward as far as Yorkshire, as if with the intention ofleaving England altogether. There was some excuse for them in the stateof Scotland at the time, where all the resources of the Argyle Governmenthad failed in the contest with Montrose; but not the less were theEnglish Parliamentarians out of humour with them. Angry messages had beeninterchanged between the English Parliament and the Scottish military andpolitical leaders; and a demand had been put forth by the Parliament thatthe Scots should hand over into English keeping Carlisle and othernorthern towns where they had garrisons. At length, Montrose having beensuppressed by David Leslie's horse, and great exertions having been madeby the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun to restore a good feeling between thetwo nations, Leven's army did come back out of Yorkshire, to undertake aduty which the English Parliament had been pressing upon it, as asubstitute for its late employment at Hereford. This was the siege ofNewark. About the 26th of November, 1645, or three weeks after the Kinghad left Newark to return to Oxford, the Scottish army sat down beforeNewark and began the siege. The direct distance between Oxford and Newarkis about a hundred miles.--Through the winter, though the New Model hadnot quite completed its work of victory in the South-west, the chiefbusiness of the King at Oxford consisted in looking forward to the nowinevitable issue, and thinking with which party of his enemies it wouldbe best to make his terms of final submission. Negotiations were actuallyopened between him and the Parliament, with offers on his part to come toLondon for a personal Treaty; and there was much discussion in Parliamentover these offers. The King, however, being stubborn for his own terms,the negotiations came to nothing; and by the end of January 1645-6 it wasthe general rumour that he meant to baulk the Parliament, and take refugewith the Scottish army at Newark. Till April 1646, nevertheless, heremained irresolute, hoping against hope for some good news from theSouth-west.

No good news came from that quarter. Operations having been resumed thereby the New Model, there came, among other continued successes of theParliament, the raising of the siege of Plymouth (Jan. 16, 1645-6), thestorming of Dartmouth (Jan. 19), and the storming of Torrington (Feb.16). The action then came to be chiefly in Cornwall, where (March 14)Lord Hopton surrendered to Fairfax, giving up the cause as hopeless, andfollowing the Prince of Wales, who had taken refuge meanwhile in theScilly Isles. On the 15th of April, 1646, the picturesque St. Michael'sMount yielded, and the Duke of Hamilton, the King's prisoner there, foundhimself again at liberty. The surrender of Exeter (April 13) and ofBarnstaple (April 20) having then cleared Devonshire, the war in thewhole South-west was over, save that the King's flag still waved over farPendennis Castle at Falmouth. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge]

The New Model having thus perfected its work in the South-west and beingfree for action in the Midlands, and Cromwell being back in London, and abody of Royalist troops under Lord Astley (the last body openly in thefield) having been defeated in an attempt to reach Oxford from the west,and Woodstock having just set even the Oxfordshire garrisons the exampleof surrendering, procrastination on the King's part was no longerpossible. His last trust had been in certain desperate schemes forretrieving his cause by help to be brought from beyond England. He hadbeen intriguing in Ireland with a view to a secret agreement with theIrish Rebels and the landing at Chester or in Wales of an army of 10,000Irish Roman Catholics to repeat in England the feat of MacColkittoch andhis Irish in Scotland; he had been trying to negotiate with France forthe landing of 6,000 foreign troops at Lynn; as late as March 12 he hadfallen back on a former notion of his, and proposed to invoke the aid ofthe Pope by promising a free toleration of the Roman Catholic Religion inEngland on condition that his Holiness and the English Roman Catholicswould "visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re-establishment"of his Crown and of the Church of England. All these schemes were now inthe dust. He was in a city in the heart of England, without chance ofIrish or foreign aid, and hemmed round by his English subjects,victorious at length over all his efforts, and coming closer and closerfor that final siege which should place himself in their grasp. What washe to do? A refuge with the Scottish army at Newark had been for sometime the plan most in his thoughts, and actually since January there hadbeen negotiations on his part, through the French Ambassador Montreuil,both with the Scottish Commissioners in London and with the chiefs of theScottish army, with a view to this result. Latterly, however, Montreuilhad reported that the Scots refused to receive him except on conditionsvery different from those he desired. The most obvious alternative,though the boldest one, was that he should make his way to Londonsomehow, and throw himself upon the generosity of Parliament and on thechances of terms in his favour that might arise from the dissensionsbetween the Presbyterians and the Independents. But, should he resolve onan escape out of England altogether, even that was not yet hopeless.Roads, indeed, were guarded; but by precautions and careful travellingsome seaport might be reached, whence there might be a passage toScotland, to Ireland, to France, or to Denmark. [Footnote: Twenty-twoLetters from Charles at Oxford to Queen Henrietta Maria in France, thefirst dated Jan. 4, 1645-6 and the last April 22, 1646, forming pp. 1-37of a series of the King's Letters edited by the late Mr. John Bruce forthe Camden Society (1856) under the title of "_Charles I. in_ 1646."See also Mr. Bruce's "Introduction" to the Letters. They contain curiousfacts and indications of Charles's character.]

It was apparently with all these plans competing in Charles's mind, that,on Monday the 27th of April, his Majesty, with his faithful groom of thebedchamber Mr. John Ashburnham and a clergyman named Dr. Hudson for hissole companions, slipped out of Oxford, disguised as a servant andcarrying a cloak-bag on his horse. He rode to Henley; then to Brentford;and then as near to London as Harrow-on-the-Hill. He was half-inclined toride on the few more miles that would have brought him to the doors ofthe Parliament in Westminster. At Harrow, however, as if his mind hadchanged, he turned away from London, and rode northwards to St. Alban's;thence again by crossroads into Leicestershire; and so eastwards toDownham in Norfolk. Here he remained from April 30 to May 4; and it is onrecord that he had his hair trimmed for him here by a country barber, whofound much fault with its unevenness, and told him that the man who hadlast cut it had done it very badly. It was now known in London that hisMajesty was at large; it was thought he might even be in hiding in thecity; and a Parliamentary proclamation was issued forbidding theharbouring of him under pain of death. On the 5th of May, however, heended all uncertainty by presenting himself at the Scottish Leaguer atNewark. He had made up his mind at last that he would remain in Englandand that he would be safer with the Scots there than with the EnglishParliament.--It was a most perilous honour for the Scots. The EnglishParliament were sure to demand possession of the King. Indeed the Commonsdid vote for demanding him and confining him to Warwick Castle; and,though the vote was thrown out in the Lords, eight Peers protestedagainst its rejection (May 8). In these circumstances the resolution ofthe Scots was to keep his Majesty until the course of events should beclearer. Newark, however, being too accessible, in case the Parliamentshould try to seize him, Leven persuaded the King to give orders to theRoyalist governor of that town to surrender it to the Parliament; and,the siege being thus over, the Scottish army, with its precious charge,withdrew northward to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13).[Footnote: Iter _Carolinum_ in Gulch's, Collectanea Curiosa(178l),Vol. II. pp. 445-448; Rushworth, VI. 267-2/1; Clar 601-2; Baillie, II.374-5.]

On the 10th of June the King issued orders from Newcastle to all thecommanders yet holding cities, towns, or fortresses, in his name,anywhere in England, to surrender their trusts. Accordingly, on the 24thof June, the city of Oxford, which the King had left two months before,was surrendered to Fairfax, with all pomp and ceremony, by Sir ThomasGlenham. The surrender of Worcester followed, July 22; that ofWallingford Castle in Berks, July 27; that of Pendennis Castle inCornwall, Aug. 17; and that of Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, Aug. 19.Thus the face of England was cleared of the last vestiges of the war. Thedefender of Raglan Castle, and almost the last man in England to sustainthe King's flag, was the aged Marquis of Worcester. [Footnote: Rushworth,VI. 276-297; and Sprigge's Table of Battle, and Sieges.]

FALLEN AND RISEN STARS.

In August 1646, therefore, the long Civil War was at an end. The Kingbeing then at Newcastle with the Scots, where were the other chiefRoyalists? I. _The Royal Family._ The Queen had been abroad againfor more than two years. In July 1644, having just then given birth atExeter to her youngest child, the Princess Henrietta Maria, she hadescaped from that city as Essex was approaching it with his army, and hadtaken ship for France, leaving the child at Exeter. Richelieu, who hadkept her out of France in her former exile, being now dead, and CardinalMazarin and the Queen Regent holding power in the minority of Louis XIV.,she had been well received at the French Court, and had been residing forthe two past years in or near Paris, busily active in foreign intrigue onher husband's behalf, and sending over imperious letters of advice tohim. It was she that was to be his agent with the Pope, and it was shethat had procured the sending over of the French ambassador Montreuil toarrange between the Scots and Charles. The destination of the Prince ofWales had for some time been uncertain. From Scilly he had gone toJersey, accompanied or followed thither by Lords Hopton, Capel, Digby,and Colepepper, Sir Edward Hyde, and others (April 1646). Digby had aproject of removing him thence into Ireland, and Denmark was also talkedof for a refuge; but the Queen being especially anxious to have him withher in Paris, her remonstrances prevailed. The King gave orders fromNewcastle that her wishes should be obeyed, and to Paris the Prince went(July). The young Duke of York, being in Oxford at the time of thesurrender, came into the hands of the Parliament; who committed thecharge of him, and of his infant brother the Duke of Gloucester, with thePrincesses Mary and Elizabeth, to the Earl of Northumberland in London.The baby Princess Henrietta, left at Exeter, had also come into the handsof the Parliament on the surrender of that city (April 1646), but hadbeen cleverly conveyed into France by the Countess of Morton. The King'sfighting nephews, Rupert and Maurice, who had been in Oxford when itsurrendered, were allowed to embark at Dover for France, after aninterview with their elder brother, the Prince Elector Palatine, who hadbeen for some time in England as an honoured guest of the Parliament; andan occasional visitor in the Westminster Assembly. II. _Chief RoyalistPeers and Counsellors._ Some of these, including the Duke of Richmond,the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl ofSouthampton, remained in England, submitting moodily to the new order ofthings, and studying opportunities of still being useful to theirsovereign. Others, and perhaps the majority, either disgusted withEngland, or being under the ban of Parliament for delinquency of too deepa dye, dispersed themselves abroad, to live in that condition ofcontinental exile which had already for some time been the lot of theMarquis of Newcastle and other fugitives of the earlier stage of the war.Some, such as Digby and Colepepper, accompanied the Prince of Wales toParis; others, among whom was Hyde, remained some time in Jersey. TheQueen's conduct and temper, indeed, so much repelled the best of theRoyalist refugees that, when they did go to France (as most of them wereobliged to do at last), they avoided her, or circled round her at arespectful distance.

While these were the descending or vanishing stars of the Englishfirmament, who were the stars that had risen in their places? As thequestion interests us now, so it interested people then; and, to assistthe public judgment, printers and booksellers put forth lists of thosewho, either from the decisiveness and consistency of theirParliamentarianism from the first, or from its sufficiency on a totalreview, were entitled, at the end of the war, to be denominated _TheGreat Champions of England._ [Footnote: One such fly sheet, publishedJuly 30, 1646 by "Francis Leach at the Falcon in Shoe Lane," has beenalready referred to (see Vol. II, p. 480, _Note,_ and p. 433, _Note_).The lists there given, though very useful to us now, contain a great manyerrors--misspellings of names, entries of persons as still alive who weredead some time, &c. In those days of scanty means of publicity, it wasfar more difficult to compile an accurate conspectus of contemporariesfor any purpose than it would be now.]

There were two classes of these Champions, though not a few individualsbelonged to both classes:--I. _The Political Champions, or ChampionPeers and Commoners._ The Champion Peers were reckoned as exactlytwenty-nine; and, if the reader desires to know who these twenty-ninewere, let him repeat here the list already given of those who wereParliamentarian Peers at the outset (Vol. II. pp. 430-1), only deletingfrom that list the heroic Lord Brooke and the Earls of Bolingbroke andMiddlesex as dead, and the Earls of Bedford, Clare, and Holland, ashaving proved themselves fickle and untrustworthy, and adding a new Earlof Middlesex (son and successor of the former), an Earl of Kent, an Earlof Nottingham, and a Lord Montague of Boughton (successors of thedeceased Royalists or Non-effectives who had borne these titles), andLord Herbert of Cherbury, once a Royalist, but now passing as aParliamentarian. The Champion Commoners were, of course, a much largermultitude. At the beginning of the war, as we saw (Vol. II. pp. 431-4).about three-fifths of the Commons House as then constituted, or 300 ofthe members in all, might be regarded as declared or possibleParliamentarians. Of these, however, death or desertion to the other sidein the course of four years had carried off a good few, so that, withevery exertion to swell the list of the original Commoners who at the endof the war might be reckoned among the faithful, not more than about 250could be enumerated in this category. On the other hand, it has to beremembered that, since August 1645, when the New Model was in its fullcareer of victory, the House of Commons had been increased in numericalstrength by the process called Recruiting, _i.e._ by the issue ofwrits for the election of new members in the places of those who haddied, and of the much larger host who had been disabled as Royalists. Ofthis process of Recruiting, and its effects on the national policy, weshall have to take farther account; meanwhile it is enough to say that,between Aug. 1645, when the first new writs were issued, and Aug. 1646,when the war ended, as many as 179 Recruiters had been elected, and wereintermingled in the roll of the House with the surviving originalmembers. [Footnote: This is my calculation from the Index of new Writs inthe Commons Journals between August 21, 1645, and August 1, 1646. Seealso Godwin's _Commonwealth_, II. 84-39.] Now, most of these Recruiters,from the very conditions of their election, were Parliamentarians, andsome had even attained eminence in that character since their election.About 140 of them, I find, were reckoned among the "Champions;" and, ifthese are added to the 250 original members also reckoned as such, thetotal number of the Champion Commoners will be about 390. [Footnote: InLeach's fly-sheet the exact number of Champion Commoners given is 397.Among these he distinguishes the Recruiters from the original members byprinting the names of the Recruiters in italics. In at least _eleven_cases, however, I find he has put a Recruiter among the original members.Also I am sure, from a minute examination of his list throughout, that headmitted into it, from policy or hurry, a considerable number whoseclaims were dubious.] It must not be supposed that they had all earnedthis distinction by their habitual presence in the House. Only on oneextraordinary occasion since the beginning of the war had as many as 280been in the House together; very seldom had the attendance exceeded 200;and, practically, the steady attendance throughout the war had been about100. Employment in the Parliamentary service, in various capacities andvarious parts of the country, may account for the absence of many; but,on the whole, I fancy that, if England allowed as many as 390 originalmembers and Recruiters together to pass as Champion Commoners at the endof the war, it was by winking hard at the defects of some scores of them.

II. _Military Champions_. Here, from the nature of the case, therewas less doubt. In the first place, although the Army had been remodelledin Feb. 1644-5, and the Self-Denying Ordinance had excluded not a few ofthe officers of the First Parliamentary Army from commands in the NewModel, yet the services of these officers, with Essex, Manchester, andSir William Waller, at their head, were gratefully remembered.Undoubtedly, however, the favourite military heroes of the hour were thechief officers of the victorious New Model, at the head of whom wereFairfax, Cromwell, Skippon, Thomas Hammond, and Ireton. For the names ofthe Colonels and Majors under these, the reader is referred to our viewof the New Model at the time of its formation (_antè_ pp. 326-7).Young Colonel Pickering, there mentioned, had died in Dec. 1645, muchlamented; Young Major Bethell, there mentioned, had been killed at thestorming of Bristol, Sept. 1645, also much lamented; but, with allowancefor the shiftings and promotions caused by these deaths, and by theretirement of several other field-officers, or their transference togarrison-commands, the New Model, after its sixteen months of hardservice, remained officered much as at first. While, with this allowance,our former list of the Colonels and Majors of the New Model proper yetstands good, there have to be added, however, the names of a few of themost distinguished military coöperants with the New Model: _i.e._ ofthose surviving officers of the old Army, or persons of later appearance,who, though not on our roll of the New Model proper, had yet assisted itsoperations as outstanding generals of districts or commanders ofgarrisons. Such were Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, and SirThomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, in favour of whom, as well as ofCromwell, the Self-Denying Ordinance had been relaxed, so as to allowtheir continued generalship in Cheshire and Wales respectively (_antè_,p. 334, Note); such was General Poyntz, who had been appointed to succeedLord Ferdinando Fairfax in the chief command of Yorkshire and the North;such were Major-general Massey, who had held independent command in theWest (_antè_, p. 337), and Major-general Browne, who had held similarcommand in the Midlands; and such also were Colonel Michael Jones(Cheshire), Colonel Mitton (Wales), Colonel John Hutchinson (Governor ofNottingham), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Governor of Wardour Castle, Wilts),and Colonel Robert Blake (the future Admiral Blake, already famous forhis Parliamentarian activity in his native Somersetshire, his activegovernorship of Taunton, and his two desperate defences of that townagainst sieges by Lord Goring). Several of these distinguished coöperantswith the New Model, as well as several of the chief officers of the NewModel itself, had already been honoured by being elected as Recruitersfor the House of Commons. [Footnote: My authorities for this list of themilitary stars in August 1646, besides those already cited for the NewModel at its formation (_antè_, p. 327, _Note_) and an imperfect list inLeach's fly-sheet (_antè_, p. 376, _Note_) are stray passages in theLords Journals, in Whitelocke, and in more recent Histories. I think Ihave picked out the chief coöperants with the New Model, but cannot vouchthat I have done so. When one has done one's best, one still stumbles ona Colonel _this_ or a Lieut-colonel _that_, evidently of some note,perplexing one's lists and allocations.]

If one were to write out duly the names of all the Englishmen that havebeen described or pointed to in the last paragraph as the risen stars ofthe new Parliamentary world of 1646, whether for political reasons or formilitary reasons, there would be nearly five hundred of them. Now, asHistory refuses to recollect so many names in one chapter, as the eyealmost refuses to see so many stars at once in one sky, it becomesinteresting to know which were the super-eminent few, the stars of thehighest magnitude. Fortunately, to save the trouble of such an inquiryfor ourselves, we have a contemporary specification by no less anauthority than the Parliament itself. In December 1645, when Parliamentwas looking forward, with assured certainty, to the extinction of the fewlast remains of Royalism, and was preparing Propositions to be submittedto the beaten King, it was anxiously considered, among other things, whowere the persons whose deserts had been so paramount that supreme rewardsshould be conferred upon them, and the King should be asked to do hispart by admitting some of them, and promoting others, among the Englisharistocracy. This was the result:--

THE EARL OF ESSEX:--King to be asked to make him a Duke. The Commons hadalready voted him a pension of £10,000 a year.

THE EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND:--To be made a Duke, and provision for him tobe considered.

THE EARL OF WARWICK (Parliamentary Lord High Admiral):--To be made aDuke, with provision; but the dukedom to descend to his grandchild,passing over his eldest son, Lord Rich, who had taken the wrong side.

THE EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY:--To be made a Duke, and all hisdebts to the public to be cancelled.

THE EARL OF MANCHESTER:--To be made a Marquis, and provision to beconsidered for him.

THE EARL OF SALISBURY:--To be made a Marquis.

VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE:--To be made an Earl,

LORD ROBERTS:--To be made an Earl.

LORD WHARTON:--To be made an Earl.

LORD WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM:--To be made an Earl.

DENZIL HOLLES:--To be made a Viscount.

GENERAL SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX:--To be made an English Baron and an Estate of£5,000 a year in lands to be settled on him and his heirs for ever: hisfather LORD FERDINANDO FAIRFAX at the same time to be made an EnglishBaron.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL:--To be made an English Baron, and an Estateof £2,500 a year to be settled on him and his heirs for ever.

SIR WILLIAM WALTER:--To be made an English Baron, with a like Estate of£2,500 a year.

SIR HENRY VANE, SEN.:--To be made an English Baron. As the peerage woulddescend to his son, SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER, the honour included_him_.

SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.

SIR PHILIP STAPLETON:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.

SIR WILLIAM BRERETON:--£1,500 a year to him and his heirs for ever.

MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON:--£l,000 a year to him and his heirs forever. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Dec 1, 1645.]

Had Pym and Hampden been alive, what would have been the honours votedfor them? They had been dead for two years, and the sole honour for Pymhad been a vote of £10,000 to pay his debts, It mattered the less becausethese Dukedoms, Earldoms, Viscountcies, and Baronages were all to remain_in nubibus_. They were contemplated on the supposition of a directPeace with the King; and such a peace had not been brought to pass, andhad been removed farther off in prospect by the King's escape at the lastmoment to the Scottish Army. It remained to be seen whether Parliamentcould arrange any treaty whatever with him in his new circumstances, and,if so, whether it would be worth while to make the proposed new creationsof peers and promotions in the peerage a feature of the treaty, orwhether it would not be enough for the Commons to make good the honoursthat were in their own power--viz. the voted estates and pensions. ForEssex, who was at the head of the list, the suspense (if he cared aboutthe matter at all) was to be very brief. He died at his house in theStrand, September 14, 1646, without his dukedom, and having receivedlittle of his pension. Parliament decreed him a splendid funeral.

CHAPTER II.

WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHSOF THE NEW MODEL--THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES--INDEPENDENCYAND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED:CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE ANDTHE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT--PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THEARRANGEMENT--THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS--EFFECTSOF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVENTO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED--NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE--THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THESCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE NINETEENPROPOSITIONS--PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZINGOF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE: DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON.

During the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the fieldwhich had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645--August1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in theWestminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seeminglyinterminable Church-business and its collaterals.

THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES.

That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formallydecided in January 1644-5 (_antè_, pp. 172--175). Not even then,however, could the Presbyterians consider their work over. There were tworeasons why they could not. (1) Although the essentials of Presbytery hadbeen adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be thepowers of the parochial consistories and the other church courtsrespectively? What discretion, for example, was to be left to eachminister and his congregational board of elders in the matter ofspiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from thecommunion? Was there to be any discretion; or was the State to regulatewhat offences should be punished by excommunication? Again, were thevarious Church-courts, once established, to act independently of theCivil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal ofecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or theentire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Anothergreat question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Shouldthe new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with orwithout a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people,represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demandedan absolute, or at least a very large, freedom of religious belief andpractice; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certainamount of such freedom; nay, Parliament itself, by its AccommodationOrder of September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration,and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of thePresbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attackedand slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of theIndependents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress ofblasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell!

Such were the questions for continued controversy between thePresbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645,when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in thesequestions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the twoparties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the NewModel?

INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSYCONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SIONCOLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS INPARLIAMENT.

The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to thePresbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enoughpersonally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it waslargely officered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch-Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope ofthe Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it wasnot to fail, when NASEBY was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the whilethe Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison,a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of thePresbyterians. "Honest men served you faithfully in this action," wereCromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field:"Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not todiscourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humilityin all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for theliberty of his country, I wish he may trust God for the liberty of hisconscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." [Footnote: Carlyle'sCromwell, I. 176.] This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory ofNaseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of thePresbyterians. "My Lord Fairfax," writes Baillie, June 17, "sent up, thelast week, an horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian]: the wholeAssembly went in a body to the Houses to complain of his blasphemies. Itwas the will of Cromwell, in his letter of his victory, to desire theHouse not to discourage those who had ventured their life for them, andto come out expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. Youwill see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the Houses."[Footnote: Baillie, II. 280] The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentionedwas Paul Best (see _antè_, p. 157). He was accused of "diversprodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the HolyGhost." Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled,and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse toawait his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had beendeepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similargrounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member forNottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemygenerally. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's caselasted two years.] All this only a day or two before Naseby; and now fromthe field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory onbehalf of Toleration! Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best?

What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Bestmust be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state ofthings in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being atCoventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a piouspreacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, andthe gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit ofcuriosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence tothe quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of hisacquaintances. "When I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," hesays, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: I heard theplotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention tosubvert both Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry were mostprevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; andThomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and Lynn, of excellentparts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together.Abundance of the common troopers, and many of the officers, I found to behonest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear theTruth, and of upright intentions; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot-headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell'schief favourites, and by their heat and activity bore down the rest, orcarried them along with them, and were the soul of the Army. ... Theysaid, What were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror'scolonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains?They plainly showed me that they thought God's providence would cast thetrust of Religion and the Kingdom upon them as conquerors." They werefull of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or _Sots_, thePresbyterians or _Priest-biters_, and the Assembly of Divines or _Dry-vines_; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, andAntinomians.--Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of someuse by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, tobecome chaplain to Col. Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of beinguseful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But hisreception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as I came to the army," hesays, "Oliver Cromwell coldly bid me welcome, and never spoke one word tome more while I was there, nor once all that time vouchsafed me anopportunity to come to the headquarters, where the councils and meetingsof the officers were." Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell tohim. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, andwould make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never forgiven either.[Footnote: Baxter's Autobiography (_Reliquiæ Baxterianæ), 1696, pp. 50,51.]

Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti-Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism,passing on into a drift of universally democratic opinion. ThroughEnglish society, and especially in London, there was much of the same.

Since the publication of Edwards's _Antapologia_ in July 1644 thewar of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had beenincreasingly virulent. The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief ofthem, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhapsPrynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency andToleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and Hanserd Knollys, IfBibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popularEnglish Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first halfof the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialistswhose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twistedknot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration ofseveral scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, inthe exact order of their publication, and with an account of the natureof each. London contained so many of these pamphleteers that the mostdeadly antagonists in print could not avoid each other in the streets,and Burton, for example, meeting Dr. Bastwick, would ask him withirritating politeness when his new book was coming out. Many of thepamphlets, however, and these the most daring and intemperate inexpression, were anonymous. Such was _The Arraignment ofPersecution_, purporting to be "printed by Martin Claw-Clergy forBartholomew Bang-Priest," and to be on sale at "his shop in TolerationStreet, right opposite to Persecution Court." In this and other popularsquibs, to which neither authors nor printers dared to put their names,the toleration which Goodwin and Burton argued for gravely and logicallywas demanded with passionate vehemence, and with the most unsparing abuseof the Presbyterians, the Scots, and the Westminster Assembly. [Footnote:Wood's Ash. III. 860 (Prynne) and 308-9 (Vicars); Jackson's Life of JohnGoodwin, 61--79; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 385 et seq. (Prynne andBurton), and III. 68, 69 (Bastwick, Burton, and others). Notes of my ownfrom the Stationers' Registers.]--One Tolerationist, here deserving anotice by himself, was John Lilburne. An avowed Independent even beforethe meeting of the Long Parliament, and forward as a Parliamentarycaptain from the very beginning of the war (Vol. II. 175, 458, and 588-9), Lilburne had been one of those who regarded the Solemn League andCovenant of 1643 as incompatible with Liberty of Conscience, and whom nopersuasions could induce to sign that document. He had risen,nevertheless, by Cromwell's arrangement, to be Lieutenant-colonel inManchester's own dragoon regiment, and he had served bravely at MarstonMoor. Between him and Cromwell there was the most friendly understanding.Lilburne looked upon Cromwell as "the most absolute single-hearted greatman in England;" and Cromwell owned a kindly feeling for Lilburne. Butthere was a pig-headedness in Lilburne's honesty which even Cromwellcould not control. "If only John Lilburne were left in the world, thenJohn would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John" was HenryMarten's witty, and yet perfectly true, description of him. Having been awitness for Cromwell in Cromwell's impeachment of Manchester, he thoughtCromwell culpably weak in allowing the impeachment to drop and notbringing Manchester to the scaffold; and he had himself brought a chargeagainst a superior officer, named King. Then he had become utterlydisgusted with the general conduct of affairs and the subservience ofParliament to the Presbyterians. He would leave the army; he would "digfor turnips and carrots before he would fight to set up a power to makehimself a slave." His two brothers, Robert and Henry, continued to holdcommands in the New Model; but not all Cromwell's arguments could induceLilburne himself to come into it. On the 30th of April, 1645, he hadresigned his commission, presenting at the same time a petition to theCommons for his arrears of pay, amounting to £880 2_s_. He had resolvedto be thenceforward a political agitator, a link between the Independencyof the Army and what Independency there was already in London itself.Accordingly, from the beginning of 1645, Lilburne, still not more thantwenty-seven years of age, is to be reckoned as one of the most prominentAnti-Presbyterians in London, an especial favourite of all the sectaries,and even of the populace generally, on account of his boundlesslylibertarian sentiments and his absolute fearlessness of consequences.There was talk of trying to get him into Parliament on a convenientopportunity. Meanwhile he took to pamphleteering, selecting as his firstobject of attack his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne fortoleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism,with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any contemporary duel, and made morepiquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of theduellists. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. 1-24, and418-19; Wood's Ath. III. 353-4, and 860; Edwards's _Gangræna,_ Part I.46, 47, Part II. 38, and Part III. 153 _et seq._; Commons Journals, Jan.17, 1644-5; Prynne's _Fresh Discovery._]

The denunciation of Paul Best (June 10, 1645) was a Presbyterianmasterstroke. Even moderate people stood aghast at the idea of toleratingopinions like his; and that the wretched owner of them could plead hisliberty of conscience (which Best did in prison) was more likely thananything else to put people out of patience with Conscience and itsLiberty. But, about the same time that Paul Best was put in prison to betried for his life for Blasphemy, there were persecutions and punishmentsof others, whose offence was far less theological heterodoxy than mereIndependency or Anti-Presbyterianism. "Blessed be God," writes Baillie,July 8, 1645, "all the London ministers are with us: Burton and Goodwin,the only two that were Independent, are by the Parliament removed fromtheir places." In other words, John Goodwin had just been ejected fromhis vicarage of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, and Henry Burton for thesecond time from his living in Friday Street, nominally for irregularpractices in their ministry, but really because they were in the way ofPrynne and the Presbyterians. Mr. Goodwin, who had a large following inthe City, had little difficulty in setting up an Independent meeting-house of his own in Coleman Street; but poor old Mr. Burton seems to havebeen in sad straits for some time. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 299; Jackson'sLife of Goodwin, 79 _et seq._; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note.--Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney.]----Burton and Goodwin havingbeen called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. Withcharacteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing thebusiness of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House ofCommons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker,circulating printed copies of his petition among the members, and alwayswith outspoken comments on affairs, and attacks on this person and onthat. On one occasion he and Prynne had met by chance, and there had beena violent altercation between them. Twice, in consequence, Lilburne hadbeen in custody for examination as to his concern in certain Anti-Presbyterian pamphlets, but on each occasion he had been discharged. Hehad then gone down to the Army, and procured a letter from Cromwell,recommending his case to the House. "He hath done both you and thekingdom good service," wrote Cromwell, "and you will not find himunthankful." Returning to London, Lilburne had caused this letter to beprinted and had circulated copies of it. No effect followed, and Lilburnestill haunted Westminster Hall, waylaying members as they went into theHouse, till they abhorred the sight of him. On the 19th of July he was inthe Hall, and was overheard by his enemies Colonel King and Dr. Bastwicktaking part in a conversation in which dreadful things were said of theSpeaker, his brother, and other public men. The information wasimmediately reduced to writing by King and Bastwick, and sent in to theSpeaker, with this result: "_Resolved_, That Lieutenant-colonelLilburne be taken into custody, and so kept till the House take furtherorder." Questioned in custody by a committee of the House, Lilburnerefused to answer, stood on his rights as a freeborn citizen, &c. He alsocaused to be printed _A Letter to a Friend_, stating his case in hisown way; this Letter, as increasing his offence, was reported to theHouse, Aug. 9; and, on the 11th of August, having been again contumaciousin private examination and committed to Newgate, he was ordered to remainthere for trial at Quarter Sessions. He remained in Newgate till Oct. 14,when he was discharged, by order of the House, without trial. [Footnote:Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. l5-21; Commons Journals of datesgiven; Wood's Ath. III. 860.]

Such prosecutions of individuals formed an avowed part of the method ofthe Presbyterians for suppressing the Toleration heresy. Cromwell, awaywith the Army, could only continue to hint his remonstrances toParliament in letters; but this he did. The greatest success of the NewModel after Naseby was the storming of Bristol, Sept. 10, 1645; and inthe long letter which Cromwell wrote to the Speaker, giving an account ofthis success (Sept. 14), he recurred to his Toleration argument."Presbyterians, Independents, all," he wrote, "have here the same spiritof faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; they agree here, haveno names of difference: pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! Allthat believe have the real unity, which is most glorious, because_in_ the Body and _to_ the Head. For being united in forms, commonlycalled Uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do asfar as conscience will permit. And for brethren, in things of the mind,we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason." By order ofParliament this Letter was read in all the churches of London on Sunday,Sept. 21, and also circulated in print. It does not seem, however, tohave sunk very deep. [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 188.--As late as1648 I find this passage of Cromwell's letter quoted and largelycommented on by the Scottish Presbyterian Rutherford (_A Survey of theSpiritual Antichrist._ 1648, p. 250 _et seq._) in proof of Cromwell'sdangerousness, and his sympathy with Familism, Antinomianism, and othererrors.]

Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may beregarded as little "Accommodation Orders" in his own name, remindingParliament and the Westminster Assembly of that formal "AccommodationOrder" which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had thenbeen passed (_antè,_ pp. 168-9). What had become of this AccommodationOrder? The story may be given in brief:--The Grand AccommodationCommittee had immediately appointed a small Sub-Committee, consisting ofDr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians,and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. Thebusiness of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements,"was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between theIndependents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did theirbest, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons theGrand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings hadobtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. Thefive original Independents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge,Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. William Carter and Mr, William Greenhillnow added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) theirReasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeableto them; [Footnote: The increase of the number of avowed Independents inthe Assembly at this point from Five to Seven is worth noting. From thevery first, however, there must have been a few in sympathy to somevariable extent with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as early as Dec. 7,1643 (Letters, II. 110), speaks of "the Independent men, whereof thereare some _ten_ or _eleven_ in the Synod, many of them very able men," andmentions Carter, Caryl, Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. (See ourList of the Assembly, Vol. II. 516-524,) There had been efforts on thepart of the Independents in Parliament to bring more representatives ofIndependency into the Assembly. Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, thevery day on which the Lords agreed with the Commons in the nomination ofJohn Durie to succeed the deceased Calibute Downing, the Lords on theirown account nominated John Goodwin of Coleman Street to ho of theAssembly, and with him "Dr. Homes of Wood Street, and Mr. Horton,Divinity Lecturer at Gresham College" (Lords Journals of date). TheCommons, whose concurrence was necessary, seem quietly to have withheldit, and thus the Assembly missed having John Goodwin in it as well asThomas. "Homes" (Nathaniel Holmes: Wood's Ath. III. 1, 168) was also anIndependent, and probably "Horton" leant that way (Thomas Horton: Wood'sFasti, II. 172).] and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborateAnswer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but,without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essentialparts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified byParliament in January 1644-5. [Footnote: The Reasons of Dissent by theSeven Independents and the Assembly's Answer were not published till1648. They then appeared by order of Parliament; and they wererepublished in 1652 under the title of _The Grand Debate concerningPresbytery and Independency_.] Affairs then took a new turn in theAssembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merelycritical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of themwas led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing toprepare their own complete Model of Congregationalism, to be contrastedwith that of Presbytery. The Assembly eagerly caught at the imprudentoffer, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee forbringing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons forthe same. This was in March 1645; and from that time the Seven, supposedto be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensationfrom attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed,September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in theirModel. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. Atlength, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly--what? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged forseven months, but a brief Paper of Reasons for not bringing in a Model atall! "Upon these considerations," they said in concluding the Paper, "wethink that this Assembly hath no cause to require a Report from us; norwill that Report be of any use: seeing that Reports are for debates, anddebates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable Houses; who havealready voted another Form of Government than that which we shallpresent."--It was the astutest policy that the Independents couldpossibly have adopted; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselvesoutwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order hadagain to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferencesof the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "TheIndependents in their last meeting of our Grand Committee ofAccommodation," writes Baillie, Nov. 25, "have expressed their desiresfor toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects." That was theupshot! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, andtheir one flag now was Indefinite Toleration. [Footnote: Hetherington'sHist. of the Westminster Assembly (1843), pp. 220-236; Hanbury'sMemorials, II. 548-559, and III. 1-32; Baillie, II. 270-326; CommonsJournals, Nov. 14, 1645.]

The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to theirendeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, orarrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset onthe Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on asignal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets fromthe press. Prynne published one; Baillie sent forth his _Dissuasive_(_antè_, p. 142); and Edwards was printing his immortal _Gangræna_(_antè_, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press werenot enough. The real anxiety was about the action of Parliament. Theexpectation of the Presbyterians, grounded on recent experience, as thatParliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, andrepudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only be prudent tobring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. ThroughDecember 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians wereceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. Andwith signal success:--Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergyof London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of theAssembly: the mass of them remained outside that body. But this mass,being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way asboth to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had beenin the city, in the street called London Wall, a building called SIONCOLLEGE, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use ofthe London clergy, and answering for them most of the purposes of amodern clubhouse. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of latebeen in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so thatat length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion College hadbecome a kind of discussion forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet inconnexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoctwhat was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from theAssembly to Sion College in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty couldsummon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which wehave arrived such a hint was given; and on the 18th of December, 1645,there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all theministers of the City of London expressly against Toleration. "These aresome of the many considerations," they say in the close of the Letter,"which make a deep impression upon our spirits against that Great Dianaof Independents and all the Sectaries, so much cried up by them in thesedistracted times, namely, A Toleration--A Toleration. And, however noneshould have been more rejoiced than ourselves in the establishment of abrotherly, peaceable, and Christian _accommodation_, yet, this beingutterly rejected by them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the fore-mentioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured _Toleration_.Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c." The Letter waspresented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care thatit should be published that same day.[Footnote: Cunningham's London, Art._Sion College_; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 97-99; Stationers' Registers,Jan. 1, 1645-6.]--The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterianas the clergy, and they too were stirred up. "We have gotten it, thanksto God, to this point," writes Baillie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor,Aldermen, Common Council, and most of the considerable men, are grievedfor the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. They haveyesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly renewed their Covenantby oath and subscription, and this day have given in a strong Petitionfor settling Church-government, and suppressing all sects, without anytoleration." The Petition was to the Commons; and it was particularlyrepresented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for thePetitioners, that "new and strange doctrines and blasphemies" were beingvented in the City by women-preachers. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 337;Hanbury, III. 99, 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 1645-6.]

Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could theParliament do? They did what was expected. They shook off Toleration asif it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and CommonCouncil that there would be due vigilance against the sects and heretics;but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had receivedthe City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance wassincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Richardson, it seems, had beenstanding at the door of the House of Commons, distributing to membersprinted copies of the Confession of Faith of the Seven BaptistCongregations in London (see _antè_, p. 148). It was as if they hadsaid, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenets